# Meeting Cost Calculator

Source: https://lessmeeting.com/tools/meeting-cost-calculator/

See what your team's meetings cost a year in salary time, then put a price on nine habits like late starts, missing agendas and dropped action items.

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A free calculator with no signup and no email. Enter your headcount split into three groups (executives, managers, everyone else), each group's average hourly rate or yearly salary and share of time spent in meetings, and the average number of attendees per meeting. It returns the annual cost of the team's meetings and the average cost of a single meeting, then puts a yearly price on nine habits: unnecessary attendees, no prepared agenda, a missing key attendee, off-topic time, meetings that miss their goal, late starts, late finishes, no minutes shared, and action items that never get done. The result downloads as a one-page PDF summary.

The calculator itself is an interactive tool; use it at [/tools/meeting-cost-calculator/](/tools/meeting-cost-calculator/).

## How to calculate the cost of a meeting

1. Count the people in the room.
2. Multiply by their average hourly rate (annual salary divided by about 1,900 working hours; add benefits and payroll tax for a fully loaded figure).
3. Multiply by the meeting's length in hours.
4. Multiply by how often it runs (a weekly meeting runs about 50 times a year).

Example: six people averaging $65 an hour in a one-hour meeting cost $390. Held weekly, that meeting costs about $19,500 a year.

## FAQ

**How does the calculator work out the team total?** For each group, headcount × average hourly rate × share of time in meetings, scaled to 1,900 working hours a year. The meeting count assumes a 53-minute average meeting with the number of attendees you set.

**Should I use salary or fully loaded cost?** Salary is the conservative number. Enter a fully loaded rate (including benefits and payroll tax) if your finance team uses one.

**How are the nine habit costs estimated?** Each habit uses a fixed assumption about how much of the affected time is wasted. A late start loses 90% of the late minutes for everyone waiting; an unnecessary attendee wastes about 90% of their time in the room; a meeting with no minutes shared costs about 1.5 hours of rework. Set a slider to zero to remove that habit from the total.

**Where are my numbers saved?** The math runs in your browser, and inputs are saved on your device only. "Reset to defaults" clears them.

**How do I get the number down?** Start with the most expensive habit; for most teams that's a timed agenda and a shorter invite list. Less Meeting tracks meeting time and cost across the team. Full guide: [the real cost of your recurring meetings](/blog/making-meetings-more-expensive/).

Less Meeting tracks meeting time and cost across the whole team, so the number stays current without a spreadsheet.